Apple has been boasting about a “revamped Siri” for months now, with the company standing firm in its proclamations that it plans to bring the upgrade to iPhones as early as next year. The upgrade has been so delayed, in fact, that competitors like Google have even taken shots at Apple for not delivering on its promises. While the iPhone maker has only shared select details aboout how it plans to make Siri better, new reports suggest it could tap Gemini — Google’s generative AI model — to power its upgraded Siri.
According to Bloomberg, Apple has been in talks with Google to explore a partnership with the company to build a custom AI model that Apple could use as the foundation of its revamped Siri. Apple has been trying to catch up with companies like OpenAI, Google, and even Perplexity in the generative AI field. So far, it hasn’t done a great job of delivering on the things it promised would make Apple Intelligence a viable alternative to ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot.
While the company’s pace wasn’t a complete surprise, as Apple showed up relatively late to the AI party, the company has also had a history of overpromising and underdelivering on its advertised AI features. It’s been hard not to think of the revamped Siri as vaporware. Apple has even ended up in some hot water because of the continued delays to its revamped Siri.
Gemini is just one potential option
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Apple working with others to bring AI capabilities to its devices, either. The company previously partnered with OpenAI to send requests and queries to ChatGPT — with user permission — when Siri can’t complete the task on its own. And Bloomberg says that Apple is still several weeks away from making any kind of long-term decision about whether it will move to an external model created by third-party companies or if it will continue with its own internal model.
But Gemini isn’t the only option. Apple has also been in talks with Anthropic, the company behind one of ChatGPT’s biggest competitors, Claude. Whether or not Siri’s new brain will actually end up being run by a system modeled after Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT remains to be seen. But it does show that Apple is taking steps to try to make good on its promises to bring Siri’s improvements to iPhone and other Apple-powered devices as early as next year.
Bloomberg’s report notes that Apple is “holding a bake-off to see which approach will work best,” and that there are currently two different versions of the revamped Siri in the works. One runs on Apple’s internal model, while the other leans on outside models. For now, though, no official decisions have been made. Perhaps we’ll learn more at Apple’s iPhone 17 event in September.
